Ivy Coach College Admissions Blog

Stanford had a lower acceptance rate than all eight Ivy League universities in 2013 (photo credit: King of Hearts).

So we know that Harvard University had, shockingly, the lowest admission rate in the Ivy League this year. But did Harvard have the lowest admission rate among all highly selective colleges in the United States. That answer would be…no. This distinction belongs not to Harvard but rather to Stanford University, which admitted only 5.69% of its applicant pool. At Stanford, 38,828 students applied for admission to The Farm (slightly more than the number of applicants to Harvard University), and 2,210 got spots. At Harvard, as we’ve previously reported, 35,023 students applied for admission. And of these students, 2,029 earned spots (a 5.79% admission rate).

Which other non-Ivy League schools (in addition to Stanford) cracked the top ten list of universities with the lowest 2013 admission rate, you ask? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sure did, with an admission rate of 7.29%. Of the 18,989 students who applied for admission to MIT, 1,548 earned admission. The University of Chicago also cracked the list. The University of Chicago had an 8.8% admission rate for 2013. Of the 30,069 students who applied for admission to the University of Chicago, 2,676 got in.

Stanford, MIT, and the University of Chicago are the only non-Ivy League schools on the top ten list of universities with the lowest admission rate for 2013. The rest of the list is occupied by Ivy League schools including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, and Penn. The only Ivy not on this list, in fact, is Cornell University. Does that come as a surprise to you? Let us know your thoughts on this Ivy League admission data (and this non-Ivy League admission data too).